Froebel Crosses the Alps: Introducing the Kindergarten in Italy

Abstract

The kindergarten was, in all countries but Germany, a foreign import. The most familiar aspect of its diffusion to American scholars is the spread of Froebel's teachings into England and the United States by emigrants who had left the German Confederation after the failure of the revolutions of 1848–49. Familiar as well are the propaganda efforts by Baroness Bertha von Marenholtz-Bülow in Western Europe, especially in the 1850s when kindergartens were banned in Prussia. The recent anthology edited by Roberta Wollons, Kindergartens and Cultures, has shown that many countries received this institution secondhand, as Japan and Australia did via the United States.